Arc news: September 2007

Waiting for Change

Arc brings Climate Change Forums to Russia

This month Arc will be presenting Waiting for Change by Clifford Oliver to delegates at a British Council conference in St Petersburg.

Part of the British Council's two-year programme across Russia aimed at raising awareness of the UK's committment to tackling Climate Change, Arc's visit is the latest in a long series of national and international projects. Our powerful Forum model has already been used very successfully to explore Climate Change with secondary school and adult audiences for the Science Museum and Dana Centre in London, the World Wildlife Fund in Edinburgh, at a business Forum for the SMART Company in London and for the British Council at conferences and schools in the UK and worldwide, including Norway, Denmark, Israel, Lithuania and Ukraine.

Four commuters en-route to a Climate Change conference find themselves at the mercy of the railway schedules and, huddled resignedly in a platform waiting room, begin to talk amongst themselves.

Waiting for Change is an innovative combination of traditional dialogue based events with Climate Change experts and a specially commissioned piece of Forum theatre. We explore the hard scientific facts, the moral and ethical views, and our part as individuals in a global community.

Do you believe that Climate Change is real, and who is worst affected? What hope do we have of combating it and what potential solutions make most sense?

Do we in fact need to do anything at all? If so, is this the responsibility of governments, businesses or individuals?

How should businesses respond? Many have set environmental targets, but is this going far enough? How can businesses engage and involve their employees in the challenge?

Waiting for Change engages audiences with the issues surrounding Climate Change, offering the opportunity to view things from different perspectives, to advise the characters and decide the outcomes. It's a powerful shared experience which moves people and gets them talking, aiding genuine reflection and discussion while removing the personality issues that can prove a barrier to effective dialogue. It's a dynamic way of opening hearts and minds and has the potential to affect the audience on an emotional level to ignite change.

"Through interactive theatre and storytelling we can reach out to people and make them really think about the consequences of their actions on the global environment."

Clifford Oliver - Creative Director, Arc Theatre

"I would like to thank you formally and personally for the wonderful workshop. We had excellent feedback from the participants ... there was a constant buzz, which hasn't stopped, and many have called to say how they had enjoyed and appreciated having had this opportunity to learn about the concept of forum theatre. The special approach Arc developed, mixing forum theatre and science to challenge and engage the public on the Climate Change issue, is a very powerful tool for science communication and audience participation."

In addition to exploring Climate Change, Future Use of Fossil Fuels and other environmental themes for older audiences, we also present Enviro-man for Key Stages 2 and 3. Using live, interactive theatre, we invite young people to think about their choices and the consequences of their actions on the environment in a humorous and engaging way.